As social media sites pursue advertising in a bid for new revenue, they are finding that they must simultaneously create a safe space for the advertisers they attract.

With the money, they are discovering, comes responsibility.

Facebook learned that the hard way last week. After failed attempts to get the social network to remove pages glorifying violence against women, feminist activists waged a digital media campaign that highlighted marketers whose ads were found alongside those pages. Nissan and several smaller advertisers temporarily removed their ads from the site.

Amid mounting public pressure, Facebook acknowledged that its systems to identify and remove such content had not worked effectively and promised to improve those processes. The company began removing the pages in question.

The episode underscored a conundrum for social media sites forged from the philosophy that free speech should thrive on the internet: will they be able control content created by their users, so that advertisers are not embarrassed by material beyond their control?

Advertising versus free speech

“Certainly advertisers have a singular purpose, they want to reach consumers in a positive way,” said David Reuter, vice-president for corporate communications at Nissan North America. “It is up to the social [media] companies to create an environment that provides that level of support and safety for the companies.”

Nissan immediately began working with Facebook to find a solution, Reuter said, and the brand has resumed advertising on the site. Reuter praised Facebook for acting quickly and said the company “assured us that Nissan will be able to opt out of advertising on any pages that may be deemed offensive.”

Dove, another brand that activists cited for having ads on Facebook pages denigrating women, said in a statement that it was working with Facebook to have such pages removed. “We are also refining our targeting terms in case any further pages like these are created,” said Stacie Bright, global director of marketing communications for Dove, which is owned by Unilever. “Facebook advertising targets people’s interests, not pages, and we do not select the pages our adverts appear on.”

Exactly how advertisers will be able to prevent their brands from appearing on Facebook pages with offensive content is unclear. Sarah Feinberg, director of policy communications at Facebook, declined to offer specifics about how advertisers would be able to better manage where their ads appear, but said Facebook has a policy that “if a page is flagged as controversial, there are no ads on those sites.” The site, she said, does not pre-emptively identify content as controversial until it is reported.

While traditional media companies have provided advertisers with more predictable ad positions - during a certain television show, for instance, or in specific pages of a magazine – the level of control marketers have over online display ads is not as precise. Digital ads are often placed using high-speed algorithmic technologies that allow advertisers to aim ads at a certain demographic – for example, men aged 30 to 40.

No control of ad placement

“You don’t have any control, quite honestly,” said Audrey Siegel, president of the media agency TargetCast TCM, part of MDC Partners’ Maxxcom Global Media Group. “You’re never going to know your ad was here or there. It will change every time a user refreshes their browser.”

Robert Quigley, a senior lecturer specialising in social media at the University of Texas’s journalism school, said it made sense that social media companies would face more pressure from companies as they demanded more ad dollars.

“More and more advertising dollars are moving to non-traditional online forums, that is why there is more pressure to conform. Money is behind it,” he said.

Many social media sites are also free for users, so as these companies expand, they must look to advertising for revenue. (Facebook had its initial public offering last year, and there is widespread speculation that Twitter will follow its lead soon, putting additional pressure on these sites to satisfy investors.)

Advertising on social media is also becoming a bigger piece of many digital advertising budgets. According to the research firm eMarketer, revenue from social media advertising in the United States is expected to reach $US6.43 billion by 2015, or 12.2 percent of all digital advertising spending. Revenue from Facebook advertising in the US is expected to reach $US3.87 billion, up from $US2.75 billion in 2013. Revenue from Twitter advertising in the United States is expected to reach $US484 million in 2013 and just over $US1 billion by 2015, eMarketer said.

Big brands are nervous

Matt Britton, founder and chief executive of the advertising agency MRY, whose clients include Coca-Cola, Visa and Sony, said some brands are nervous about advertising on social media. “That sort of controlled environment is slowly going away, and brands are losing control,” he said.

Other brands, Britton said, are less reactive. “They trust that Facebook is doing everything they can and they trust that that’s where consumers are,” he said. Monitoring content, however, is “easier said than done,” mainly because of the volume and “because it’s coming from consumers,” he said.

In April 2010, Twitter started allowing advertisers to post promotional messages, which would be seen by users who searched words like “pizza” or “new black dress.” But marketers soon found themselves in discussions where they did not want to be, whether mistakenly posting from a corporate account rather than a personal one or having a promotional hashtag hijacked by critics.

So as of December, Twitter began offering clients another service: negative matching.

In real time, Twitter advertisers can adjust their campaign to avoid matching specific phrases or hashtag trends. That way, if a discussion about pizza turns into a discussion about anorexia or bulimia, for example, the advertisers can make sure their promoted messages do not appear in those searches.

YouTube also has mechanisms that give advertisers some control over where their brand appears. “When we become aware of ads that are showing against sensitive content, we immediately remove them,” Lucas Watson, the company’s vice-president for online video global sales, wrote in an email. “We also give advertisers control to target specific content, and they can choose to block ads against certain content categories or individual videos.”

Last month, LinkedIn, the networking site for business professionals, clarified its terms of service to explicitly ban the selling of sexual services. “Even if it is legal where you are located,” the terms read, users cannot “create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution.”

Hani Durzy, a company spokesman, said the decision had nothing to do with concerns about making the site safer for advertisers and was solely about making LinkedIn a better place for members. Still, the move comes as the site has been ratcheting up the promotional services it offers companies.

However, when Yahoo! recently acquired Tumblr, Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, said the company did not intend to remove pornography from the social media blogging platform, even as it created more ad products for marketers.

Quigley, of the University of Texas, said he is sure more battles lie ahead and warned that trying to please big companies also had its pitfalls. “There is a danger of caring too much about what an advertiser cares about,” he said. “Violence against women is one thing that is clearly over the line, but much of the rest of it is about politics, and that is much harder.”